This paper reports on an experiment designed to investigate the effect of structural and linguistic variables on level of difficulty in solving arithmetic word problems. Identification of such variables is intended to assist curriculum writers in preparing exercises at a specified level of difficulty for students at various age levels. The study…

The problems investigated in the present study are the identification of the most effective type of presentation of dialogues in language instruction--auditory, orthographic, or some combination of the two--and the measurement of the accuracy of pronunciation and the amount of dialogue retained by the student. The controlled experiment, performed…

There is a need for empirical investigation of the optimal length for drill sentences at various states of second language learning. This paper reports the results of a study that explores the effects of sentence length and grammatical structure on the ability of foreign students to repeat English sentences. It was hypothesized that sentences of…

Project 2 of the GUME research project on foreign language teaching methods considers whether the structures "some" and "any," and their combinations in English, are best taught by adherence to the habit-formation (implicit) theory or by adherence to the cognitive-code learning (explicit) theory. The experiment also investigates the effectiveness…

Project 3 of the GUME research project on foreign language teaching methods, in line with Projects 1 and 2, questions whether the best effect in language teaching is achieved solely by intensive drilling of the structure in question (the implicit method) or if grammatical explanations further the assimilation of the patterns so that, within the…

This document discusses three educational experiments currently in progress within the Applied Language Research Center. Each of the programs concerns problems relating to teaching Spanish-speaking pupils in a public school setting. The Grade One Experimental Project is designed to determine if instruction in Spanish at the primary level (in an…

Project 5 of the GUME study on foreign language teaching methods continues the work of the previous projects concerning the relative effectiveness of a habit-formation (implicit) method and a cognitive-code learning method, with explanations in either the source or target language. The educational problem of Project 5 is teaching the English…

A summary and comparison of the statistical analysis and results of the first three GUME research projects investigating foreign language teaching methods are presented in this report. The methods investigated are the habit-formation or implicit theory and the cognitive-code learning or explicit theory with either source-language or…